Adhesives are commonly used to join or fasten two or more materials or adherents including wood, metals, plastics, ceramics, stone, glass, concrete, etc. Adhesives used for these purposes are based on a wide range of technologies including solvent/resin mixtures, epoxies, latexes, polyurethanes, silicones, cyanoacrylates, acrylics, hot melts and others. Such adhesives can have one or more drawbacks, such as high volatile organic compound (VOC) content, flammability, incompatibility with one or more classes of adherents, undesirably long cure times, insufficient bond strength and short shelf lives. A variety of moisture-curable, silane-functional resins have been developed to address many of these deficiencies. Silane-functional adhesives systems are typically cured in a two-step sequence in which water, either as water vapor or liquid water, reacts with, i.e., hydrolyzes, an alkoxysilane group to form a silanol group followed by reaction, or condensation, of the silanol group with the silanol group of another similarly hydrolyzed alkoxysilane molecule resulting in the formation of numerous crosslinks. In one-component silicone adhesive formulations, catalysts are typically employed to increase the rate of the hydrolysis reactions. In many cases, the absorption and/or permeation of water or water vapor is a rate-limiting step in the curing or crosslinking process.
Moisture-curable resin compositions are well known for their use as sealants and adhesives. Such compositions typically require a considerable amount of time, commonly several days, in which to fully cure before reaching maximum strength. In certain applications that utilize sealants and adhesives in assembly line applications (e.g., in window assembly), it is desirable to use a sealant or adhesive that can rapidly develop green strength. It is also highly desirable that the moisture-curable resin compositions exhibit long shelf (storage) life prior to their application.